DPS909 and OSD600 Fall 2014 Notes

Week 1

• Course introduction
• Question: What is Open Source? Why work on Open Source as a student?
  • I studied business and programming, not English. I still can't find a job
  • The Secret to Hiring Great Developers
  • https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/33968704983138304
  • Facebook open source in 2014
  • Facebook on Github
• Success in this course requires:
  • Willingness to be lost and not panic
  • Curiosity
  • Being driven, persistence
  • Willingness to ask for help
  • Willingness to give others help
  • Independent learning
  • Doing more, much more, than the bare minimum
• What are Seneca and Seneca students capable of accomplishing? Some examples
  • Audio Data API, Pointerlock, Gamepad API
    • https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/18/mozilla-and-unity-bring-unity-game-engine-to-webgl/
    • https://developer.mozilla.org/ms/demos/detail/bananabread
  • WebVTT
    • Example

• Intro to open source
  • Proprietary Licenses, EULAs
    • Microsoft
    • Apple, Richard Dreyfuss reads the iTunes EULA
    • Skype
  • Open Licenses
    • BSD
    • GPL
    • LGPL
    • MIT
    • Apache
    • MPL

• TODO
  • Create an account on this wiki for yourself (note: requires manual creation)
  • Add your info to the Fall 2014 Open Source Students page.
  • Create a blog (wordpress or blogspot or whatever) and create a feed category or tag called "open source"
  • Read the Blog Guidelines for instructions on how to use your blog in the course
  • Add your blog feed and info to the Open Source@Seneca Planet List so that it appears in the OpenSource@Seneca Planet
  • Pick one Closed and one Open license/EULA, and read them from start to finish. Pick 3 things that struck you, blog about it and your reactions to the readings this week.
  • Begin learning how to use IRC for communication. We'll cover this in detail next week, but it's better to get started early.

Week 2

• Open/Closed Licenses
  • Discussion of findings in license readings from week 1
  • Case Study: Markdown and open licensing, open standards, forking, blogging, and Twitter
    • Markdown 1.0.1 (2004)
    • Markdown's license
    • Markdown is used everywhere, by everyone
      • Example: Markdown for documentation - https://github.com/antirez/redis-doc/pull/417
    • calling out a maintainer (2009)
    • call for standardization of Markdown (2012)
    • failed attempt to standardize (2012)
    • podcast of Gruber discussing Markdown
    • a second attempt, Standard Markdown (2014)
    • Standard Markdown rejected
    • the difficulty with standardizing
    • naming fallout
    • a third attempt, Common Markdown (2014)
    • ...and finally http://commonmark.org
    • Winer's open email to Gruber, with parallels to RSS/Atom

• Discussion of Class Projects: enabling browser based cloud sharing
  • Filer - https://github.com/js-platform/filer
  • MakeDrive - https://github.com/mozilla/makedrive, http://blog.humphd.org/introducing-makedrive/
  • Brackets - http://brackets.io/
  • Nimble - https://github.com/mozilla/nimble.webmaker.org
  • Appmaker - https://github.com/mozilla-appmaker/appmaker
  • Mobile Appmaker - https://github.com/mozillafordevelopment/mobile-appmaker/
    • http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/spice-fire-one-running-mozillas-firefox-os-launched-for-rs-2299-230409.html
    • https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/08/29/firefox-os-smartphones-available-in-india-this-week/
    • http://bgr.com/2014/08/27/mozilla-firefox-os-smartphone-iphone/

• Release 0.1
  • Option 1 (for those new to open source):
    • Implement du in Filer
    • You will learn git, github, JavaScript, node.js, npm, Filer, code review
    • You must fix the bug yourself and have it reviewed by another student *and* review another student's implementation (i.e., do a pull request against another student's fork, and vice versa)
  • Option 2 (for those with more experience):
    • Find and fix a bug in one of the projects listed above which is of an equal size to Option 1
    • Releases 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 will be like Option 2 for everyone

• TODO
  • Sign-up for a case study and begin researching and immersing yourself - 2014 Open Source Project Case Study
  • Reading for Wednesday's class: The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Please be prepared to discuss next class.
  • Figure out which option you will do for Release 0.1 and begin working on it.
  • Sign-up for an Open Source Case Study
  • Write an introductory blog post about the case study project you chose, and the project that you will be researching.

Week 3

• Discussion of The Cathedral and the Bazaar
  • "The Linux community seems to resemble a great babbling bazaar"
  • "Linus Torvald's style of development - Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers."
  • "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
  • "Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)."
  • "Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow (Fred Brooks)"
  • "You often don't really understand the problem until after the first time you implement a solution."
  • "When you lose interest in a program, your last duty is to hand it off to a competent successor."
  • "Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging."
  • Linus' Law: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." or "Debugging is parallelizable" and "More users find more bugs...because adding more users adds more different ways of stressing the program."
  • "Somebody finds the problem...and somebody else understands it. And I'll go on record as saying that finding it is the bigger challenge."
    • In the cathedral-view bugs are "tricky, insidious, deep phenomena. It takes months of scrutiny by a dedicated few to develop confidence that you've winkled them all out. Thus the long release intervals."
    • "In the bazaar view, on the other hand, you assume that bugs are generally shallow phenomena - or, at least, that they turn shallow pretty quick when exposed to a thousand eager co-developers pounding on every single new release."
  • "If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource."

• Release 0.1 - Getting Started
  • Case Study: implementing wc
    • "%d %d %d %s\n", <newlines>, <words>, <bytes>, <file>
    • Fork it - https://github.com/js-platform/filer
    • Clone it - http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Getting-a-Git-Repository#Cloning-an-Existing-Repository
    • Setup Dev Environment - https://github.com/js-platform/filer/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md
      • An open source code editor: suggestions include Brackets or Atom
      • node.js
      • npm install
      • npm install -g grunt-cli
    • Run the Tests - https://github.com/js-platform/filer/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md#tests
      • grunt test
      • grunt test-browser and browse to http://localhost:1234/tests/
    • Find similar code - tests, code, docs
      • sh.cat() docs
      • sh.cat() code and tests
    • Write Tests First
      • Consider the cases we care about with wc
      • Study how the cat tests work
      • Study how other open source implementations work: wc.c
      • Look around the code you're writing
      • Look for similar patterns in other files
      • Use git blame and Github Search, find and read commits that added similar code
      • Copy/Paste/Modify
  • Possible implementation

• TODO
  • Install git http://git-scm.com/
  • Create a Github account if you haven't already
  • Fork and clone Filer and start on Release 0.1 if you haven't already (due in 2 weeks). Blog about your progress, what you learned, what you still need to learn
  • Read chapters 1 & 2 of Pro Git, be ready to discuss next week.
  • Read opensource.com article about Seneca and Open Source education--they are talking about you!

Week 4

• Introducing Git
  • Client Server (SVN) and Distributed (Git)
  • Snapshots vs. versioned files.
  • Checksums, SHA-1
  • File States:
    • Untracked (not known to git)
    • Tracked: modified, staged, committed
  • The staging area
• Basic Git Commands and Concepts
  • git help <command>
  • git init
  • git clone
  • git add
  • git commit, git commit -m, git commit -a
  • git rm
  • git mv
  • git status
  • git log
  • git diff, git diff --staged
  • .gitignore
  • Branches
    • HEAD, master
    • git checkout, git checkout -b
    • git branch, git branch -a, git branch -d, git branch --merged, git branch --contains
    • git merge
    • git rebase
  • Remotes
    • origin, origin/branch
    • git remote
    • git remote add
    • git fetch
    • git pull
    • git push
  • Github, Pull Requests

• Readings/Resources
  • Download and Install git
  • Git Reference
  • Visual Git Reference
  • Version Control by Example, online book
  • Overview of Git Tutorials (many good ones)
  • Videos
    • Intro to Git
    • Scott Chacon's more advanced tutorial of git
    • Linus Torvalds at Google discussing git's distributed nature
    • Github documentation
  • Linus on the value of small patches. Learning to use git well requires learning to work in small units of work, and adding them up over time.
• TODO
  • Learn git!: Watch video tutorials and Read chapter 3 of Pro Git, etc.
  • Work on your 0.1 release. See the instructions on submitting.

Weeks 5,6

• Continuing with Git
  • branches
  • remotes
  • workflows

• Connecting with Communities on irc
  • Moznet (irc.mozilla.org)
  • Freenode
  • irccloud - https://www.irccloud.com/
  • Recommended Channels
    • #filer (moznet)
    • #makedrive (moznet)
    • #appmaker (moznet)
    • #brackets (freenode)

• Guest Lecture on Wednesday with Mozilla's Kate Hudson @k88hudson
  • Discussion of Webmaker Mobile projects
  • How to get started setting it up, contributing, finding good bugs
  • How she got started in open source, and what it's like to work full time
  • IRC usernames for Webmaker on the board:
    • k88hudson
    • thisandagain

• Starting Release 0.2
  • Picking a bug
  • Suggested Projects:
    • Webmaker Mobile, Economist Article about significance of Firefox OS
    • Appmaker
    • Filer
  • Advanced Projects:
    • MakeDrive
    • Brackets
    • Cordova + Firefox OS

TODO

• Continue blogging at least once per week, write about your work on your bugs, things you're learning, issues you have, etc.
• Pick a project and find bug(s) to work on for release 0.2
• Join the irc channel(s) for the project you'll be joining
• Read the chapter on git in "Version Control by Example." Continue to build your knowledge of, and experience with git.
• Find a bug to work on for Release 0.2 and blog about the bug. What is it? How will you approach fixing it? What do you need to learn?

Week 7

• Discussion of 0.2 issues and questions (due Friday)
• Preparing for FSOSS, FSOSS 2014 Report (next week, due Oct 31)
• Licences, DMCA, Minecraft, Microsoft
• JavaScript Books and Videos
  • Crockford on JavaScript (video series)
  • Eloquent JavaScript
  • Human JavaScript
  • Node: Up and Running

TODO

• Release 0.2 due Friday - blog post with details about your bug, how you fixed it, link to your pull request, etc.
• Start reading more deeply about JS

Week 8, 9

• Media coverage of Mobile Webmaker App preview at MozFest
• Open Source as Recruiting Tool
  • "Web companies like Netflix, Twitter and Facebook understand that open source can be more: a powerful weapon for recruiting and retaining top engineering talent."
  • Open Source at Facebook
  • Open Source at Twitter
• FSOSS Discussion
  • Guest - Abhijit AM from Puna, India
• More on JavaScript
  • The JavaScript Garden
    • Anonymous Functions (lambdas)
    • Self-executing anonymous functions
    • Functional programming with Arrays, example
    • Constructor functions and the prototype, another example
    • Extending native prototypes
    • Dynamic property access
  • Google's Open Location Code repo
• Let's fix a JS bug in Brackets
  • https://github.com/adobe/brackets/issues/9529 - UI fix
  • https://github.com/adobe/brackets/issues/8190 - Crash fix

• Open Source across Companies
  • Open Source, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle
  • Open Source in 10.10

TODO

• Read the various articles linked in the class notes, blog about your reaction to what you're reading.
• FSOSS 2014 Report due this Friday, Oct 31
• Start work on your 0.3 release.
• Read Brackets Issue 9529 for Wednesday

Week 10

• JavaScript outside the browser
• node.js
  • API docs
  • source code
  • require, module.exports
  • node's callback pattern: function(err, result) {...}
  • npm
  • package.json

• Microsoft Open Sources .NET
  • Microsoft's press release
  • Microsoft's employee reaction
  • Mono lead developer's reaction
  • Source Code (on Github no less):
    • https://github.com/Microsoft/referencesource
    • https://github.com/dotnet

• Node.js and Joyent
  • Forking node?
  • http://readwrite.com/2014/11/12/node-js-joyent-possible-fork-schism
  • Advisory Board
  • Non-volunteer agreement

• nodebug.me and Community Triage
  • https://twitter.com/brianleroux/status/530983249515134976

TODO

• Work on release 0.3, due November 14th.

Week 11

• Designing for Participation
  • Question: "How to build a software production pipeline that can strategically benefit from a vibrant open source community?"
  • Tension between growing capacity vs increasing cost
  • Schedule driven, client-requirements driven, and open involvement
  • The role of partnerships, shared ownership, distributed control and responsibility

• Rules for Communicating at Github

TODO

• Start scoping your 0.4 release. Pick your bugs, follow up on review comments from previous bugs, etc.
• Pay attention to your blogging. Remember, a blog post per week is what is expected. It can be about any of your work.

Week 12, 13, 14

• Initial Git Commit

• The :9090 problem: "Convert :9090 into http://localhost:9090 automatically"
  • https://twitter.com/brianloveswords/status/531865386527248384
  • Let's try and change web browsers to do this
  • Browser vendors probably won't take the change, but it's a great way to learn
  • Platform Change vs. Extensions
  • A clue http://christian.legnitto.com/blog/2014/05/05/firefox-29s-best-feature/

• Open Source Browsers
  • Firefox
    • Build Instructions
    • Writing Extensions
    • Source Code Browser (DXR)
  • Chromium/Chrome
    • Source Code
    • Dev Docs
    • Building on Windows with VS
    • Getting the Code
    • Building Chrome Extensions
  • WebKit
    • Main project page
    • Getting the code
    • Building the code
  • Konqueror
    • Fixing bugs
    • Source Code
  • Lynx
    • Main site
    • URL Support in Lynx

TODO

• Pick a browser to work on
• Get the code, setup a dev environment, build it
• Write a blog post about the experience, with a screenshot of the build running